


Just Give Me, Like, One Second

by b00mgh



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Amy's back, F/F, F/M, Missions Gone Wrong, back again?, even garcia flynn gets to be happy, fuck everyone, gratuitously happy ending, guess who's back???, haha who the fuck am I kidding, i am a mess!, lucy is left on accident, no one we love dies, people get hurt, probably just light shipping, rittenhouse can suck my dick, tell a friend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-16 09:03:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13633101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/b00mgh/pseuds/b00mgh
Summary: It was a pretty hard mission, in their defense, and Rittenhouse has been obliterated from history, but when Rufus and Wyatt tumble out of the lifeboat into Mason Industries workroom babbling incoherently "we lost her," "we've got to go back," "shit, Lucy," Agent Christopher can only furrow her brow and ask who they're talking about.Yes, they have obliterated Rittenhouse, but that meant coming back to a time where Lucy was never born, because her parents never met. The only person they can think of to go to for help? Amy Preston, the sole operator of a small-time history podcast.





	1. Absences

Wyatt Logan is a soldier. Lucy Preston is a historian. Rufus Carlin is a pilot.

Wyatt Logan is their murderer on-call. Usually on an absolutely necessary basis. Never frivolously. Almost always sees the light die from their eyes for weeks afterward. For life, or limb, or, god forbid, his friends, he will shoot with a steady hand and an unsteady heart. Tries not to regret.   
Lucy Preston is their resident liar. Quickly, and unreeling like a spool of thread on a sewing machine. Awkwardly, and spreading like flour spilled from a bag. Regretting every lie she tells and every historical persona met because in two weeks they’ll be hit by a car and die with no one by their side. For her friends she will lie, for her sister she will lie. Always missing something.  
Rufus Carlin is their in-house spy. Both sides, three sides, every pie he can get his finger in. Intelligence in every sense of the word. Panic and fear and relentless anxiety for every secret he keeps. Constants and variables under his hand, and he can see how every string works but can’t bring himself to play puppets. Can’t help regret, and can’t help himself, but can help his friends. 

Wyatt Logan is also their calm voice. Whenever the moment calls for it. Always there when needed. Keeps the surging panic down, tempers regret with understanding. A steady hand and a steady heart when friends feel like they’re falling. Holds them all together.  
Lucy Preston is also their iron will. Inexorable, and unmoving as a tree in a lightning storm. Resilient, and unrelenting as waves against a rocky shore. Never allowing someone to worm their way through levels of reason because that is how you lose people you love in a gunfight that didn’t need to happen. Defending with every fiber of her being. Holds them all close.   
Rufus Carlin is also their conscience. Every perspective seen. Every action thought-out. Keeps them on the right side. Manages how to stay there, how to keep themselves out of the massive tangle of insecurity and the dark grays of morality. Holds them all afloat.

Together, they are all murderers, murders; all liars, lied to; all spies, spied on. They hold themselves together, when they have every right to fall apart; they hold themselves close, when it would be so easy to lose everything they are; they hold themselves afloat, when everything around them tries to drag them to the depths. They are strong, but together they are nearly unstoppable.

And then, after months of working together, they get separated.


	2. Timelines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh, whoops, it looks like someone needs help. "Someone" is actually everyone.

On October 8, 1871– or April 30, 2017, depending on which timeline one is following– the time team sets off to Chicago, Illinois. Flynn could have been there for any number of reasons, but almost every possibility involved something to do with Mrs. O’Leary’s cow. Lucy is in an absolute panic: all “it already burned 1.2 million acres of land, what does Flynn want with it now?” and “maybe he wants to make sure one of the 250 that died live,” and “or wants to kill someone who was supposed to live,” and “who lived in Chicago in 1871!?” Rufus is somewhat crossed between wary and excited: he’s grinning about seeing his home city before it went to shit (then frowning when Lucy absentmindedly corrects him that Chicago was still Chicago, even 140 years ago), and he’s wringing his hands about a giant fire that they will no doubt be caught in the middle of.  Wyatt is loading his gun and smiling at their antics. 

They’re dressed in their time-appropriate outfits and listening to Agent Christopher tell them to be careful from behind a closing door before they know it.

Less than ten hours later, there’s the tell-tale rush of air tugging on papers under various and sundry paperweights, and Agent Christopher and Connor Mason are coming out of the upstairs office, and there’s a stepstool being wheeled out to help the descent, but that’s all completely ignored by Wyatt literally falling out of the front of the lifeboat. He’s covered in ash and blood and he’s coughing like he’s choking, and he’s trying to stand but falling on account of the weird angle his leg is bent at, and Rufus jumps out after him looking in about as bad of a shape, but the only place he’s bleeding from is a cut on his head and some splinters on his hands. 

“Lucy,” is the only real word coming out in between Wyatt’s coughs.

“Connor, Agent Christopher, we lost Flynn. We lost him, there was the fire and he  _ started it _ , but he started it somewhere else, and we were looking for him, but then a beam fell on Lucy and Wyatt, and I got it off them– I got it off them!– but she ran off after Flynn, and she told me to get Wyatt to the lifeboat, and then the fire got really close, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Lucy. We’ve got to go back–” Rufus would have kept going, he’s partially delirius from the concussion and smoke inhalation, but there was Jiya pulling him into a tight hug and he just collapsed into her.

It was worse than the French and Indian War.

“Holy hell,” Connor Mason breathes. 

Ever the mother, Agent Christopher calls out, “Where’s the medic!?” She’s never seen these two this bad.

Both men are hauled off despite animated and helpless protest to get some rest. 

The next morning, thanks to some vigorous medical treatment, Wyatt is sitting up, awake, before Rufus. He can’t get out of bed, they’ve only put his knee back in place a few hours ago, that takes time to be able to walk on, and it’s the only thing keeping him in place. That and the I.V. 

“Rufus?” His voice is hoarse, but loud enough for use. 

This rouses him from the other bed, “Wyatt?” There’s about seven seconds of information intake by the engineer, then Rufus sets his head in his hand, “We’re alive, we’re home.”

“Yeah, we made it. Where’s Lucy?” No response. “She made it to the lifeboat, right?” Silence. “Rufus,” and now his voice cracks, “where’s Lucy?”

“Who  _ is _ this Lucy?” and in strolls Connor Mason, with a doctor wearing camo scrubs trailing behind him and checking on all the vitals in the room.

Wyatt laughs, darkly, because this is not a time for jokes. “Lucy Preston,” Agent Christopher follows in, putting away a cell phone, “the historian? She’s been working with us for months.”

Denise Christopher frowns, “You two have only been here a few weeks,” she explains, but there’s a cold realization dawning on her, “and I don’t know of anyone named Lucy Preston. The American government only sent two people on this trip: a pilot and a soldier. We wouldn’t risk a civilian life on an experimental mission back in time.” It’s a sting that Connor rolls his eyes, unknowing of and unfeeling to the severity of the situation.

“I did insist that a historian would be a better plan,” he adds with his usual pompous accent, “but Homeland didn’t want to expand the budget that wide until they knew the machine worked.” 

Rufus has a disbelieving, perfunctorily terrified expression, “Agent Christopher, do you know of a Carol Preston?”

“Sure, I’ve read all of her books. Why are you asking, Rufus?”

“How many daughters does she have?”

“Just one.”

Wyatt takes a steadying breath, closes his eyes tight against reality, “What’s her name?”

“Amy Preston.”

And then Wyatt is ripping out his I.V. haphazardly, while the doctor blinks in surprise, but doesn’t try to stop him because she has seen the look he holds on his face a million times in a million other shades, and she knows he won’t make it far. All of this panic has Rufus sitting up suddenly and calling out, “Wyatt, stop,” which he does, but only because the moment he puts weight on his leg, he collapses into an angry pile on the floor. 

He’s laughing now, because if there are two things he is good at, it’s denial and forcing himself to see even a small spot of light in the dark. “Well, Lucy got stuck, but we got back Amy.” Even Rufus sees enough of that irony to laugh. 

Everyone else is just very concerned that these two have lost their minds after a time-travel trip gone wrong. 

“You need to explain exactly what’s going on,” Agent Christopher demands sharply, because she’s worried now.

“We all need to explain what’s going on,” Rufus tells her, and she can’t argue with that.

According to Timeline 1– as the current reality is being dubbed– Connor Mason agreed to work  under the supervision of the Homeland Security department of the American government in exchange for a subsidy to fund his experimental time-travel machine. Agent Denise Christopher was their assigned agent. Coder Rufus Carlin had been chosen to train to fly it– Anthony was more than happy to sit out the danger, at his wife’s begging. Master Sergeant Wyatt Logan had been chosen to make sure no harm came to Rufus if they encountered hostiles. This had been their first trip: the Chicago fire had been selected specifically for it’s chaos, and, according to orders, they hadn’t been supposed to interact much with the world: just go and come back to make sure the time machine worked. Garcia Flynn was an NSA asset with a wife and two daughters (the second one just a month old now). Amy Preston was the sole daughter of world renowned and terminally ill Carol Preston, and ran a small historical fiction podcast. Jessica Logan had been found dead on the side of a road years ago, and the killer was still unknown. Rufus and Jiya had been dating for a little over a year. Rittenhouse did not and had never existed. 

According to Timeline 0– the reality Rufus and Wyatt had come from– a Rittenhouse summit was being held in Chicago at the time of the fire, and Flynn had just made the death count go up from 250 to 350 by making sure the fire started a little closer to the building they had met in: the organization did not survive the blow, apparently.

Rufus ceased scratching his head to realize “Wait, wasn’t Lucy’s biological father–”

“Benjamin Cahill,” Wyatt finished. “Rittenhouse guy. Her mom too–” he sighed heavily, finally putting the pieces together. “If her Rittenhouse parents hadn’t been forced to produce an heir, they wouldn’t have gotten together at all.”

“So Lucy was never born,” Rufus nearly chokes on the words. 

Jiya is holding his hand, and squeezes tighter, but the woman is bold. “Why don’t you go back and get her?” 

Agent Christopher nearly shoots the idea down before it gains any traction– because how  _ reckless _ can someone be? Bringing a person to a timeline where they didn’t previously exist?– but then she remembers Wyatt screaming her name between coughs and Rufus desperately trying to explain to her how sorry he was about it all. Her rulebook is telling her no, but she isn’t sure she could look at her wife before she went to bed knowing she had just sentenced a young woman to die in a time she didn’t know, all alone, for something she couldn’t help like the technicality of her existence in a particular reality. She keeps her mouth shut agreeably

Connor Mason’s curious bone has been tickled, and he agrees heartily, “Bringing someone to a reality where they were never born… fascinating.”

Little did the two in charge know, ‘no’ was never an answer Wyatt or Rufus would take– not that the assent wasn’t helpful (they are perfectly willing to become fugitives to get Lucy back, they’d done it once before after all, but it isn’t the optimum setting). 

“Before any of this, however,” Mason clarifies, “if you’re explanation has made anything clear, it is that a historian is quintessential to time travel.”

Denise Christopher crosses her arms, “Did you have anyone in mind?” she asks exasperatedly.

“I did,” Wyatt says, grinning a thin line between manic and mirth. 


	3. Stories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, you wouldn't have known it, but we're all pretty excited here.

It takes some doing, but they manage to get it cleared to have none other than Amy Preston accompany them to October 10, 1871. She doesn’t know much yet, only that she was scouted to assist the government with a top secret project, and she is cautiously thrilled as she waits in the same room Lucy met Wyatt in months ago.

At this point, it’s been a week since Wyatt and Rufus returned, and all Wyatt can think of when he sees Amy in person for the first time is Kate Drummond. She doesn’t look exactly the same as Lucy, but she has the same eyes and the shoulders and they both have the same absent-minded confidence when they ramble about history. He misses her. 

His leg is okay to walk on by now, at least, and the only reason he even let anything take this long (as opposed to, you know, stealing the time machine like he’s done before), is because Rufus keeps reminding him they can go back to the day after they left– an hour later, even– and Lucy will barely know they were gone, because she will have only spent a day in 1871 as opposed to their week in 2017. Agent Christopher keeps telling him he’ll be able to do the job ten times better if he’s not limping the whole time. Connor Mason is just pissing him off, asking him about his original timeline, what sort of missions they’d gone on before, interesting details. 

But now they have Amy, and he has his leg, and Rufus’s head is healed as long as he’s not going to go banging it again, and he’s sitting in an office chair petulantly while Agent Christopher breaks the news that time travel exists to an  _ ecstatic _ Amy Preston. 

“You’re serious?” It’s the same vocal chords, a lifetime of different tones making it vibrate in the air differently; and where Lucy was fettered by responsibility and fear, Amy is uninhibited and recklessly excited. 

Agent Christopher barely smiles, “Very.” 

An excited bubble of laughter, “O-okay! So, what am I doing? You’ve got this big, tough dude here– is he, like, security here?” A more serious tone, “Is he here to threaten me? Is this an intimidation tactic? Miss Christopher, I know I can’t tell, there’s no need for–”

“I’m not here for that,” Wyatt snaps impatiently, “ma’am,” he’s just got to say it. Just to check and make sure. 

Amy quirks an eyebrow, “I, uh, I think you’re older than me? You don’t need to call me ma’am.” He relaxes, incrementally, it’s certainly Lucy’s sister.

“Amy, this is Master Sergeant Wyatt Logan, he’s assigned to this mission to keep everyone safe,” Agent Christopher explains, and she’s both horribly endeared by this jubilant girl and exhausted by her overbearing enthusiasm, she adds, “You’ll also be working with Rufus Carlin, he’s going to be piloting the time machine.”

“Awesome, when do I meet him?”

“He’ll meet you in the machine, he’s calibrating it now.”

“Okay, okay,” a vivid smile, “that is so cool.” Momentary doubt flickers on Amy’s face, “What am I here for?”

Wyatt gives her a sardonic smile, which is more than anyone else has gotten this week, it gives her reason to notice the dark, bruising circles under this man’s eyes, the unnatural rigidity of his shoulders, “You’re our temporary historian.”

“I run a fiction podcast.”

“There’s another reason you were chosen.” Agent Christopher clarifies, because she’s not wrong. I mean, it’s a good podcast, but her listeners number in the low thousands. Good, but not extraordinary.

“My mom?” A jaded tone sneaks in.

“Your sister,” Wyatt can’t really stop himself from saying it. He won’t even pretend to accept a reality where Lucy doesn’t exist.

Amy laughs nervously, “I don’t have a sister?” Then her eyes blow wide, “Unless we were separated at birth! Wow, okay. But why did that get me chosen for–”

“Not quite, Amy,” Agent Christopher cuts her off, because this is getting exhausted, “Wyatt and Rufus came back from their first mission in this reality claiming that they have gone on multiple before, and that they had a historian that they were seperated from as part of the team.” That’s the extremely short version, but Lucy would have been the one to explain the details and she is not exactly there at the moment.

“I don’t understand.”

“We changed something in the past and came back to a different future,” Wyatt’s voice is gaining a hardened edge, because if Lucy were here she would be terrified and wondering about exactly what they had changed and praying that nobody had lost anybody without ever knowing the difference– but she had been the one lost, and he feels it like a punctured lung. 

Amy is slowly putting things together, “So, my sister?”

“She existed, apparently, in the reality they came from,” Christopher says, “but not here.” Her arms uncross, then recross, a nervous habit. “And she’s still stuck in the past.”

There’s an untruncated, weighted silence. “Where?” Amy asks, “When?” She’s starting to feel that this isn’t exactly a reason to be ecstatic, starting to feel a more somber mood overtake her. She’s feeling anxious for a sister she’s never met.

“October 8, 1871,” Wyatt tells her flatly.

“Wisconsin or Chicago?” Amy demands, because that’s the only two places it could be– and now she’s really worried. 

“Chicago,” Agent Christopher answers, “Why? What’s Wisconsin?”

“It’s the same thing,” explains Amy, “just more people die and less people know about it. I did an episode on it three weeks ago.” 

Now Wyatt is seeing more similarities, and it brings to mind questions of if Lucy had ever been as carefree as Amy had been minutes ago, so haphazardly ebullient, not so scared. But he’ll have all the time to ask her himself soon, when she’s right in front of him. 

There’s footsteps outside, a knock at the door, and Jiya sweeps in, “Rufus’s ready,” she tells them, looking somewhat breathless, “time to go.”

Wyatt and Rufus put back on their clothes from a week ago, Amy is given a dress that she dons with more somnity than she might have when she first walked into Mason Industries. When she’s dressed, she’s wringing her hands and darting her eyes, and all Wyatt can think of is that Lucy would hate to see her sister this upset, so he gives her another half-smile, “Lucy’s smart, and tougher than she looks,” he continues before Amy can protest that she has no idea what, exactly, he means, because she’s never  _ seen  _ Lucy (or for her to realize she didn’t know the name before), “she’ll be fine.”

“How are you so sure?” she asks.

Wyatt doesn’t have a very good answer, but he gives her the answer that’s truthful anyway, “I’m not, but I trust her.”

Amy nods, and for once says nothing.

Then they’re back in that damned machine; and Rufus introduces himself brusquely, trying to smile; and then the world is humming and rumbling, and the air lurches nauseatingly, and then it all stops and the front opens; and then they are exposed to the polluted air of Chicago just after the fire. 


	4. Searches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, golly gee, guess who actually went somewhere? What a concept.

If there is one convenience of this particular mission, it is that they don’t need to worry about Garcia Flynn, or what he is doing, or if he’s going to try and kill them. By now, Flynn is at home with his wife and two daughters, and he knows Rittenhouse is gone, and he knows his job is done. No need to jump around and murder himself through time, just a need to atone and try to rebuild himself from the wreckage he created. Wyatt and Rufus would like a chance to do that too, thank you very much, but they still have a historian to find, and early October of Chicago in 1871 is not exactly an easy place to navigate. 

Sidewalks and alleyways are littered with the injured and the confused and the lost and the recently homeless. Asking “Have you seen a girl– looks somewhat like this one, it’s her older sister– she’s got dark brown hair and she’s about this tall, wearing a blue dress?” does not get a lot of helpful answers. “Haven’t seen ‘er,” “yeah, only about twenty of them,” “mother is going to be just fine, she just went upstairs for a second, she’s grabbing the photo album.”

Rufus is getting frustrated, getting anxious. He won’t leave this godforsaken prehistoric era without Lucy, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t hate being there. The smell of smoke and the feel of splinters from dragging a beam off of his friends is fresh in his mind– none of this is helped by the crispy shells of buildings they can see where there are still embers burning. They are walking on the outskirts of the damage because nothing really survived if it was in that charred stripe of Chicago. They have to believe Lucy was not there. 

“Okay, student teacher,” Wyatt cuts in suddenly, and any other day the nickname would have made him grin, but he was caught too off-guard to fake it, “where do we look?”

Amy is entirely out of her element, she’s caught between staring at the absolute devastation around her and trying to make herself as small and unnoticeable as possible. Rufus can relate to the feeling. They wander for almost an hour before Amy can remember anything to help.

“Well–” and her voice is hesitant and she’s looking warily at Wyatt, who anyone can see is wound tighter than a spring (which is supplemented by the three times he has nearly gone to blows with someone who carelessly told him they wished they had seen Lucy), “was, um,”

Locking eyes with her, because he’s exhausted but not quite as scarily so, Rufus captures her attention, “Go ahead,” and that seems to work to let her know Wyatt won’t nearly go to blows with  _ her _ for saying something.

“Was– uh, was Lucy… injured?” Now the reason for her hesitance is clear: it’s a scary thought, and nobody is dealing with scary thoughts very well right now. 

Her response is less verbal than bodily. She can see the response in the way Wyatt doesn’t really seem certain right away, and how Rufus stiffens and slumps. 

Before anyone gets too carried away being worried, Amy throws up her hands to gesticulate meaninglessly, nervously, “Because, um, if she was,” and she swallows thickly, “she’d be at a hospital–” she explains in rambles, which feels familiar, “even after the fire, most of the seriously injured people got to a hospital. There’s all sorts of stories of people helping each other, carrying neighbors, strangers, anybody that needed help to a hospital 1 . It’s really likely she went to a hospital or someone took her there.” 

“Great,” Wyatt sighs, because that is severely comforting– it’s not a good, modern hospital, but he cannot remember what state Lucy was in when Rufus dragged him to the lifeboat, so the fact that there is a hospital she could go to is wonderful news– “where’s that?”

“What street are we on? Oh, ok, it’s around six blocks that way,” they start walking, and she stutters her steps, “Wyatt, do you have a gun?”

He nods, but his face screws up into a concerned grimace, “Why?”

“You, um, might… need it?” 

“Why does Wyatt need his gun in the city that is still, technically, on fire?” Rufus squeaked hoarsely, “The danger should be the actual literal fire, right?” he’s actually sort of panicking, and in his defense it’s a stressful day and everyone else is only half a step behind him.

Amy offers no mollification, just a nervous “After the fire, thieves and looters and criminals flocked to Chicago. It got pretty risky. They had to enforce Martial Law.”

“Great, so we’re not only surrounded by sparking embers and charred remains, but also thieves and muggers,” Rufus snaps. “Gotta love Chicago.”

They keep walking. They don’t talk much, so Rufus keeps his brain busy with considering what sort of building codes could have come out of this disaster, and whether or not that blackened street corner looks a little familiar. He notices Amy is leading them, but she looks entirely uncertain of herself, she jumps at every passing wanderer and hobo. Wyatt’s head is on  swivel, carefully blank expression, Lucy calls it his war face, but it looks more anxious than angry, more defense than offense; he puts himself between any of the more dangerous-looking loiterers and Rufus and Amy, hand pressed to the pistol in his waistband. 

They make it to the hospital, and they ask the beyond-stressed receptionist about Lucy.

“I’m sorry but I could not tell you if I’ve seen her or not.” It’s understandable, this man hadn’t slept in almost two days, and on top of that there were patients spilling from the seams of this hospital. They don’t try to make a fuss. They split up to search each floor for Lucy: Amy on the ground level, Rufus on level 2, Wyatt on the top floor. 

There’s cots in the hallway; the conditions are hardly hospital grade with all the ash and chaos; people are wandering aimlessly or sprinting, no in between; one in every five people has a severe burn, one is bruised nearly beyond recognition, and the other three are coughing up their lungs; everyone is starting to hope Lucy isn’t here. Lost in the streets is better than nearly dead.

They keep searching until the sun is starting to descend from the top of the sky, and then they meet up and agree she isn’t here, that they had better search somewhere else. 

Wyatt is only getting more strung out as the search progresses, “Where else could she be, Amy?” He’s gripping her arms, hard. Rufus is a little surprised that she doesn’t fold in half, break down, but she  _ is _ Lucy’s sister and her eyes harden and her jaw sets itself and she squares her shoulders and she looks exactly like her for a split second, not even long enough to say anything, but long enough for Wyatt to back up. “Sorry, sorry, I’m just–”

“I gotcha, Captain America, my alternate reality sister’s your Bucky. You’re fine.”

The sentence is simultaneously shocking enough to shut both their mouths and absolutely incomprehensible enough to keep them shut. Not that Wyatt and Rufus haven’t seen Avengers, but they certainly don’t understand what she meant either. 

But this realization must really do something for Amy, because she grins confidently and tells them “There’s another hospital twelve blocks, uh, that way, we can check there. If that’s not it then we should probably go back to checking the streets.”

 

They don’t quite make it to the hospital. The sun is starting to turn less white hot and more faded gold when a man accosts them. He comes from behind, and there haven’t been many people around for a while, which is the only reason he is even close to able to pin Wyatt against the wall and hold a knife to his throat. “Gimme what’cha got,” he hisses. 

“W-we don’t have anything, sir,” Amy pleads, “Nothing at all.”

Wyatt snakes his hand to go for his gun, and it’s such a short distance, but the mugger is not as blind as they’d like him to be. The blade presses close enough to break skin, “Don’t. Hands above your head, slow.”

Wyatt does as asked, but he makes meaningful eye contact with Rufus, who is all-but invisible in the moment. Rufus wastes no time grabbing a loose brick from the ground and slamming it into the mugger’s shoulder, which doesn’t take him down but does stun him long enough for Wyatt to grab his gun and point the barrel between a disgruntled set of eyes. 

Choosing life over pride, the mugger grumbles “Fine, I’m goin’,” and he slinks off under the watchful eye of the gun. 

It takes several seconds, but the tension does release.

“You could have killed him,” Amy breathes.

“You’re sister would have been pissed,” Wyatt responds, and there’s enough adrenaline left in him to smile sadly. 

“Let’s go find her, then,” Rufus says, and there’s a pair of nods, and they continue to the hospital. 

Rufus can’t help but think of how quiet it is without Lucy. Loquacity isn’t necessarily a trademark characteristic of hers, not like it is her sister’s, but between her and him there’s usually a solid banter going on; and if not something nerdy between them, then her and Wyatt are off on their own wavelength, leaving Rufus as a mostly-comfortable third-wheel. Amy is more naturally chatty, but, despite her confidence, she doesn’t know how to talk to them like Lucy does, or what to talk about. Wyatt and Rufus are too anxious to start saying something, too aware of the hole where Lucy would correct them or add some little rambling detail. So it stays pretty quiet, and they can only hear the mumble of the street-people and the occasional rush of a passing person and the distant wail of sirens putting out the last of the small fires. 

The buildings are looking more intact the further they walk, and the people are looking sketchier, and the sun is looking lower. They walk closer together. 

The hospital is in sight, and it looks bad. One half has barely been missed by the fire: ash blackens the white-paint exterior. People are spilling from the front entrance, either walking out or walking in, all of them looking exhausted and most looking injured to some degree. Thick shadows shroud them enough that someone with an imagination might describe them as specters of death haunting a place where the doomed go to die. 

But just because it looks very close to hell in disguise does not mean they won’t search it for Lucy.

They’re in tight ranks now, pressed in by disheveled bodies on every side like an eddying stream of collateral damage. Rufus and Wyatt find themselves sandwiching Amy between them: she’s not experienced in this; and the throng of strangers covered in ash, bandages, and blood has shot her moment’s confidence; and she’s half a foot shorter than Lucy, at least, and Lucy is not tall. This hospital has a team of receptionists, and two more floors. There are patients being treated in the lobby. 

Approaching the desk, and a man who looks to have been stretched farther than a favorite hair tie, the first response they get is “We can’t take any more patients, I’m  _ sorry _ .” He looks like he’s going to cry as he says it. “You can see how over-extended our services have gotten– yesterday I saw a janitor stitching up a girl’s arm, a janitor! The man barely knew how to sew! That girl’s arm is going to look like something from  _ Frankenstein _ for the rest of her life!”

They don’t interrupt him at first– because who are they to stop a veritable customer service representative from exhaling an iota of the stress he’s experienced today?– but when it becomes clear he could ramble all day and that he might be slightly delirious, Wyatt puts his hands firmly on the reception desk. “We’re just looking for a friend,” he says sharply, with a grin very far from his normal and looking much closer to some kind of shark, “I doubt you could  _ tell _ us where she is,” and there is an unspoken ‘because you’re half as incoherent as most of the patients here,’ “but we would be  _ very grateful _ if we could just look for her.” He’s speaking slowly, through grit teeth. Tested patience.

Blinking once, twice, three times, very slowly, the receptionist looks at a small picture in the corner of his desk, then back at the trio across the desk, then says with a watery beam “I can’t really  _ stop _ you all, technically, really. I mean, who’s going to notice a small group such as yourselves in all this cacophony? I can’t say I would.”

He keeps rambling. They start their search. 


	5. Discoveries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You know what? Here it is. You guessed it.

They don’t split up this time– not with the sun so low and not with the memory of that mugger so fresh in their mind– they search together. Floor by floor, room by room, cot by cot. 

The first floor has the most recent arrivals and the not-so-seriously injured, as well as the surgery theaters. Lucy is not there.

The second floor seems to hold an eclectic mix of the shock-deranged and the surgery-survivors, and there is one woman who swings a scalpel at them and calls them demons from another world (a nurse hauls her off and roughly apologizes). Lucy is, thankfully, not there. 

On the third floor, they find a mix of the pregnant women, the children, and the elderly– and they are starting to discover there is rhyme and reason in this bedlam. They hardly check this floor.

The fourth floor is the floor where they begin to fear: the sun is now all but gone, a drop on the horizon, and searching sleeping hordes will not be easy or fruitful. The fifth floor holds the bedridden, the paralyzed, and the occasional surviving comatose patient, and it is a place of last resort, the fourth floor is the last place they can earnestly hope Lucy is. It holds the mixed-bag patients: those who don’t need surgery, but are injured; not deranged, but shellshocked; not ‘just a band-aid,’ but not ‘janitor gave me stitches.’ It’s filled to the brim: there aren’t even enough cots anymore, people are sitting on the ground if they don’t have a leg or spine injury. Nurses are going room-to-room, doing what they can with scarce supplies. Some of these people are murmuring quietly with loved-ones, but for those with no loved ones around or to speak of, there is a listless, lolling posture and vacant eyes. It’s not as loud as the other floors, save the noises of sirens coming through walls, or shouts and cries seeping up through the floorboards. 

They almost miss her. 

They almost miss her despite, or maybe because of, Wyatt’s panic over not finding her and Amy’s hypersensitivity to the pain and Rufus’s unsteady feet. 

They almost miss her because, or maybe despite the fact that, she’s slumped in a corner and covered in enough ash to make her look ten years older and there’s blood spotting her blue dress. 

She almost misses them because she’s not even conscious.

Lucky for everyone, both Wyatt and Rufus are trained to be able to spot Lucy (or, to be fair, each other, or even Garcia goddamn Flynn) from three miles out dressed in anything from a pantsuit to a head scarf to a ballgown to the ashes of the Hindenburg, and under conditions ranging from, but not limited to, the forests of the French and Indian War, the battlefield of the Alamo, or a Nazi-infested party-room. 

Rufus actually does a double take because this is the  _ last place _ he would ever want to have to find anyone in, especially not one of his best friends. 

“Is that–?” and he can’t really bring himself to ask the full question, but Wyatt sure can and he’s sprinting all seven of the feet to kneel next to her.

When Rufus and Amy meet them on the gross floor, he’s got a hand on her shoulder, and the slight pressure is enough to wake her up with a grimace and a cringe. 

“Lucy? Lucy, come on, what’s wrong?”

Her eyes stretch themselves open, “Wyatt?” and she looks around, “Rufus? Amy?” Pain falls to panic falls to rapture falls to resignation. “I’m dead, then,” her voice is a croak, it sounds the way her boys’ voices sounded a week ago– or two days ago, depending on which timeline one is following. She starts to cry, but only a few tears come out, and there is suspicion in everyone that this may be due to a water shortage, because she’s still crying, just without the tears.

“Lucy, it’s  _ us _ , we’re  _ alive _ , you’re  _ alive _ ,” Rufus is pleading, and he’s got her hand and he nearly drops it because he notices there’s a bandage stretching over her whole forearm and it’s leaking a bit, “What happened to you, Lucy?” 

Amy is too shocked to do anything: she’s just sitting there. She’d wanted a sister, she’d been excited, so excited to meet her, but she thinks she’d rather not have met her at all than see any human being like this: sobbing without tears because she must be dead to be seeing anyone she loves. She can’t say anything– what would she even say?

“W-we gotta get her home,” is what shoots from Amy’s mouth when she’s not looking. 

Rufus nods a bit sideways, “She’s more likely to die of disease here than anything else–  _ god _ , why did we wait so long?” His voice is cracking and he’s running his free hand over the side of his face, nervous habit. 

“If we’d have gone in sooner there would still be a fire everywhere,” Amy reminds him, she’s trying to reason her way to safety, “we went back to as soon as we could.”

“I’m sorry,” Lucy is whispering between breaths, “Flynn got away, I chased him,” she’s grabbing their hands– Wyatt’s got one and Rufus has the other– “I chased him, but he shot me, I’m  _ sorry _ .”

“He  _ shot you _ !?” Wyatt snaps. He’d kill the man.

Lucy, even half-sensical as she is, rectifies, “Just a graze, Wyatt, he shot you worse when he assassinated Lincoln.”

“He did  _ what _ !?” Amy had not been filled in on exactly what the past of the time team was. 

Lucy is coming to terms with the dubious facts telling her that she is either not dead, or that dead souls do not get omniscience when they pass on. Neither is promising. “You didn’t tell my sister that I dated Lincoln’s son?” Lucy demands weakly, and after a second or two of her coughing like she’s choking they can tell she’s trying to laugh.

“Guys, we’d better hurry,” there’s worry creasing Amy’s brow, “I think she’s lost too much blood, she’s not making any sense.”

“No, Lucy really did go on a date with Robert Lincoln,” Rufus says, sighing heavily with relief at the joke and apprehension at everything else. 

“But we do have to go,” Wyatt says, “Can you walk, Professor?” 

“I don’t know, I haven’t tried,” Lucy responds, a little too vacantly for comfort. “I’m really not dead if I have to walk, am I?”

Wyatt grins, and it’s soft and warm like some really good breakfast food, “Not on my watch, ma’am.”

Lucy uses her friend’s hands and the momentum of grumbling “Stop calling me that,” to haul herself to her feet. Wyatt loops her arm (the good one, not the one with the leaking bandage that Rufus was still very worried about) around his shoulders before she can collapse into a useless pile like she was about to. 

“How far?” She mumbles, doing her best to keep herself supported, but mostly relying on Wyatt. 

“18 blocks?” Amy squeaks nervously, because she is quickly realizing that the boys aren’t the only badasses on this team.

Rufus raises a hand, “No, actually, only seven: I know this city, and I know we’ve walked in a partial circle.” 

“Thank god,” Lucy breathes, her tone melodramatic. She’s exhausted and in pain and a million other things, but there’s also not a snowball’s chance in hell she’s going to show the extent of it, just like she’s not going to tell the truth about the way she can feel a tightness in her chest when she breathes or how lightheaded she is after not eating for over a day or that leaky bandage on her left arm. Not when Rufus is smiling at her like she’s the button in the damned machine that will physics them home, not when Wyatt is so relieved at not losing anyone that he might actually collapse under her weight, not when her little sister is right there and looking awestruck and horrified in a way Lucy had never even seen. 

The going is slow– the crazy scalpel lady is back on the loose on the second floor, but she sees them and cheers them out the door “return to your world, goblins! Ne’er return!” and does not try to maim them. The street is illuminated by the stars and the moon and the distant remnants of flame– nobody really wanted to light the lanterns lining the streets, for some reason. 

They are not mugged on the way back either. A miracle, really, considering the fact that it would be so much easier to rob them in the dark while they carry an injured person than it had been to try a few hours ago.

Lucy is trying to talk, but there’s a wheezing sound from her chest and she’s choking on the ash coating her throat and she’s losing blood. Eventually she can’t even hold herself up, and then Wyatt forgoes propriety and her pride and just straight up carries her the rest of the way. 

Rufus asks if he needs help, because that is a very large dress. Wyatt says he’s fine, let’s just hurry. 

Amy asks if things are always like this. Rufus says no, last time he had been shot, and the time before that it was Wyatt. Wyatt assures her that he’s not usually so awful at his job, thanks Rufus, and that most of the time nobody dies; he says it’s a different story when Flynn tells Al Capone to shoot them, and he is still sorry about that. Amy can’t even respond to that, but Lucy can and does and she says that it’s a good thing she is not the designated driver. 

They start walking faster. Seven blocks is very far, all of a sudden. 

When they actually get to the lifeboat, inside the hollowed-out shell of a building burnt black, they are presented with the second problem: there’s only three seats. Lucy gets strapped in first, she’s entirely and worryingly unconscious now; and Rufus has to sit in the pilot’s seat. 

“I-I’ll stand,” Amy stutters, she’s trying to be as brave as the people around her.

“Your sister would kill me if I let you,” Wyatt assures her, “sit down.”

There’s a grumble of protest, a worried frown, but she sits. 

“Where’s the safest in-flight spot here, Rufus?” Wyatt asks, he’s about to either die or get more nauseous than he’s ever been.

There’s a nervous laugh, “Uh, the wall? Wyatt, I don’t think there is a good spot to be in.”

“Are you sure you don’t want–” Amy starts.

Wyatt cuts her off, “Sweet,” he says, “just like the alien ride at the fair.”

“Probably,” Rufus tries for a humored smile, but it comes off as a more concerned grimace. “Ready?”

“Not an option,” Wyatt jokes, “Hit it, Rufus.”

He does, and they take off, and it’s sort of like the alien ride at the fair, but, like, in reverse, and so for a split second Wyatt is dragged to the middle of the lifeboat, then to the top, then he drops to the floor when they land. More nauseous than ever, but living.

The door opens, Wyatt spills out the front again, shouts “Medic!” over the pitch of his stomach, and closes his eyes tight before standing and helping Amy down the ladder, followed by Rufus, and the three of them watch the medics carry Lucy out on a stretcher.


	6. Histories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wowee I'm feelin good. So is somebody elllseeeee by proxxxyyyyyy.

Everyone insists that Wyatt at least get a solid once-over before he starts uselessly waiting around with everyone else. They’re all waiting for the doctors to finish with Lucy, either because they care about her or they’ve never met her and are morbidly curious to see how she’ll fare in a world where she was never born.

He obliges, hurries the poor man examining him with thinly-veiled aggravation, and then goes to sit down and be useless with everyone else. 

The only useful thing he can really do is answer Mason and Christopher’s questions: they have just one, “did you change anything?” He, Rufus, and Amy tell them “no,” and then they all go back to being useless. 

After what feels like an eternity, but only really took half an hour, a doctor comes out of the medical lab in the second floor of Mason Industries. 

“She’s alive, and she’ll live–”

“What was it, doc?” Wyatt demands. Christopher and Mason give him a passing glance because they don’t know him very well yet. 

“Nothing unheard of: she’d been shot in the leg, that’s the worst of it,” he tells them all with a perfunctory frown.

“Garcia Flynn,” Rufus clarifies, and, helpfully, nobody asks about that in the interest of listening to the doctor.

The doctor nods, continues, “Then there was the smoke inhalation, bruised and fractured ribs, a small pneumothorax–”

“What’s all that from!?” Amy asks incredulously, gripping the bottom of her chair– nervous habit.

The doctor has no answers, Rufus’s head goes to his hands, “The beam,” he says, and it has Wyatt shifting defeatedly in his seat, looking anxiously at the door, “it fell on both of you– goddammit.”

Clearing his throat, the doctor finished, “She’ll recover fully: pretty soon all that’ll be left is the scar from the bullet wound, and, uh,” he senses backlash and swallows thickly in preparation, “and the scarring from that burn on her left arm.”

They had all noticed the leaking bandage and they had all ignored it with a sense of purpose; not like they could have done anything about it anyways, they weren’t doctors. 

The man leaves, looking relieved, and they are all left in their own thoughts.

Wyatt is filled with a moldy kind of bliss: she won’t survive unscathed as he did, but she will survive. There’s absolute relief tempered with regret. 

Rufus is disappointed in himself, there’s a sense of resignation in the fact that nobody blames him. The feeling fades the more he sees Wyatt and Amy relax, vertebrae by vertebrae.

Amy is amazed beyond words; first, she’s got a sister; then, her sister is half dead; now, her sister is apparently much stronger than any other person she’s ever met, aside from, perhaps, her teammates. Amy has absolutely no idea that her approval could possibly mean so much to Lucy. 

Connor Mason comments airily, “Well, she hasn’t disintegrated, and she hasn’t ceased all bodily function, so I’d say my hypothesis was wrong, and she will most likely be able to live just as well here as in her own universe.” Pointedly, the topic of Mason’s horrific hypothesis is avoided. 

This time, they wait for two hours while the doctors suck the built-up air from the lining of Lucy’s lungs, while they clean and bandage the gunshot wound in her leg, while they wrap her torso to keep the ribs from jostling too much, while they remove debris from and treat the burns on her arm, while they check for signs of physical abnormality in this creature from an alternate plane of reality. 

In the first of those hours, after the doctor has spoken but before the real restlessness set in, Jiya points out that everyone is some varying degree of dirty, and while she doesn’t mind  the ashes necessarily, there is something in her expression that explains that she is somewhat uncomfortable with the stripes of Lucy’s blood painting several parts of Wyatt’s outfit: in this reality, she’s never seen any of their blood, and Rufus pauses to reflect that he’s grateful for that. Wyatt is obstinate until Amy points out that the last thing Bucky Barnes wants to see coming out of cryosleep is Steve covered in his blood– again, they’re not super certain they follow, but Wyatt gets the point and begrudgingly goes home for a shower, where he scrubs every speck of blood from his skin because it feels like acid burning him through. While he’s gone, Rufus and Amy change into normal clothes and take turns washing their faces and hands in the bathroom. Everyone wants to wash this whole thing off like the dirt, but they aren’t that lucky. 

In the second hour Wyatt returns, looking exactly as bad as when he left, but with a military cleanness. Mason orders tacos with doordash– it is still Taco Tuesday, and nobody has eaten. For the most part, nobody does eat, except a few halfhearted bites when asked. Rufus holds Jiya’s hand like a tether to sanity, Amy curls herself into a tight ball in her uncomfortable plastic chair, Wyatt paces agitatedly. 

The doctors finally return, three of them filing out, with nurses carrying discarded sterile equipment and cloth in plastic trash bags that are two shades too transparent to miss the red tinge to them all. Everyone stiffens, spines straightening and postures bracing for impact.

“She’s fine, sleeping off the anaesthesia,” says a doctor, her smile tight, “she should be awake in a few hours.”

Everyone eats another taco, now that their stomachs don’t feel like bottomless pits, then they go back to waiting uselessly. Mason says he has to go resolve an issue in another facility and takes his leave; Agent Christopher gets a call from her superior and has to drive to meet him for a debrief of the mission, she has no idea what she’s going to say but she leaves anyway; Jiya convinces Rufus that Lucy won’t wake up until morning, and that he looks awful, and that they should go to sleep, “home is only a few minutes away, in this reality,” she says, and they leave too. It’s down to Amy, who is falling asleep miserably in her chair, and Wyatt, who is still pacing with an expression that could kill an undertaker. 

“She’s not dead,” Amy mumbles tiredly, her wide, brown eyes follow him listlessly.

“Shouldn’t you go take care of your mom?” Wyatt snaps, he doesn’t mean to.

Amy shakes her head softly, “Told a family friend I was going to Chicago for a few days, she’s taking care of her.”

“Sorry, I didn’t–”

“I know, you didn’t mean it.”

There’s a significant pause “You sound just like her.”

Amy blinks very slowly, “Why don’t you go home?” she asks.

“Nobody to go home to.”

Eventually, when there’s no one around to say no, they both migrate their uncomfortable plastic chairs into Lucy’s room. She’s sleeping like the dead and she’s pale like the dead and there’s bandages everywhere and bruises everywhere else: Wyatt sits his chair right next to her and feels her wrist for a pulse– the heart monitor could easily be lying. Amy sets up her chair on Lucy’s other side, and she falls asleep in it within less than six minutes: the last thing Amy hears is Wyatt telling her sister that she was going to be fine, that she had to be fine, please be fine, he’s sorry.

 

Lucy wakes up early the next morning, just after dawn, and blinks the tiredness from her eyes. Wyatt and Amy wake up just after when the heart monitor beeps out a warning of an unnaturally high heart rate. 

“Amy?”

“...Hi?”

“Wyatt, Wyatt wake up, Amy is  _ here _ , Wyatt, she’s actually  _ here _ . I thought I was hallucinating! Where’s Rufus? Where are we?”

“Lucy, take a deep breath,” Wyatt jokes, there’s a light in his eyes and he’s grinning less like a shark and more like a teenager. 

Despite the joking part of the suggestion, Lucy does take a deep breath. “Amy I’m so happy to see you again,” the heart monitor has calmed down, and tears are welling in Lucy’s eyes. 

A doctor bursts in, breathing hard like she was running, then sees everything going on, glances back at the monitor, and laughs, “Good to see you up then, I’ll let Rufus know” and she leaves the same way she came. 

Rufus runs in, Jiya shyly in tow, fifteen minutes later. He wraps Lucy in a hug that’s as gentle as he can stand to be in his relief.

“Um,” Jiya stutters, “I’m Jiya, nice to meet you.” She smiles awkwardly before extending a hand to shake.

Lucy takes the hand, smiling, but it’s a thin mask over her confused grimace, “Jiya, what’s going on? I’ve known you for months.” Her eyes cast about the room for answers. 

There’s a taken aback component of Jiya’s expression, and another part welling with sympathy for the oncoming realization. This Lucy catches, and she whirls to the boys: “What changed?”

Rufus swallows thickly, “There’s, uh, there’s good and bad news here,” his fists are clenched and his tongue feels like lead, “the good news is, we took out Rittenhouse,” and that’s as far as Rufus gets.

“What’s the bad news?” Lucy demands, a sick feeling in her stomach.

Wyatt sighs, his face crumbling as he finally told her “Since we took out Rittenhouse, your parents never met.”

There’s a heavy silence, pregnant with twins of foreboding and anxiety: it’s broken when Lucy giggles. As the anxiety about the impending reaction turns to anxiety about the stability of the reactor, Lucy’s giggle picks up into a full, bright, wonderful laugh. Nobody can really join her, and they’re all more than a little worried for her mental integrity.

“It’s the exact opposite of Amy,” she finally says, her hilarity subsiding, “I got my sister back, but now I don’t exist.” She turns to face Rufus and Jiya specifically, “Am I going to be able to survive here?”

“Mason thinks so?” Jiya ventures.

“Perfect.”

“Lucy, you’re being a little scary,” Wyatt interrupts, putting a hand on her shoulder. His voice deepens with emotion, “Why is  _ any _ of this perfect?”

“I’m alive,” Lucy exclaims, “and I get to literally start over from scratch, I’ve got my sister back, and I’ve got you guys, and I don’t have a fiance or a classroom or a supervisor to make excuses to. Rittenhouse is gone, nobody is in imminent danger, Flynn won’t be bothering anyone again. It’s all  _ perfect _ .” Her face is so bright, her eyes on fire with possibility and her lips turned into a jubilant smile. 

Wyatt snaps in half and pulls her into his arms. He’s not crying, but it’s by the skin of his teeth, “I’m sorry, Luce,” he mumbles into her shoulder, “I’m so so–”

“Wyatt you didn’t do anything, there was nothing you could have done,” Lucy reassures him, her good hand brushing back the hair from his forehead. Rufus, Jiya, and Amy are feeling very out of place, but can’t think of a good time to excuse themselves. “This situation fits me fine, I’m not dying. If this is the only price to pay to get rid of Rittenhouse, it’s a  _ bargain _ .”

Then Wyatt actually starts to cry, and Lucy gives Rufus a  _ look _ that means he and Jiya can escape the awkwardness, the gravity of the emotion of the room. Amy follows stealthily. 

For about half an hour, Wyatt just cries and Lucy consoles him. 

 

After that, the sailing is smoother than expected. 

It takes some days, but Lucy is given a new passport, ID, and a whole lifetime of paperwork that matches her description of her life before as closely as it can be matched. 

It takes some weeks, but she starts living with Amy and their mother again, after she’s given leave by a doctor, and they start to really feel like sisters again. Agent Christopher, Jiya, and even Connor Mason warm up to Lucy too. Amy insists that they round up the time team to binge all the Captain America movies, and she talks straight through them about her semi-obsessive surety that Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes are going to get married– and when Rufus asks where that leaves him, Amy assures him that Sam Wilson is also a badass. 

It takes some months, but Lucy finally heals altogether. She can take a full-force hug, carry in all seven of her grocery bags from the car, and resume missions with her boys. The only physical remnants of the Great Chicago Fire are the thin line of scarring on Lucy’s leg and the web of burns on her left arm and hand that Wyatt will kiss softly whenever he gets the chance.

It takes some years, but Lucy and Wyatt get married, about a year and a half after Rufus and Jiya. Entirely for shits and giggles, they invite the Flynn family, and Garcia, Lorena, Iris, and Lucija attend, Garcia Flynn is absolutely the most apologetic man they have ever seen, and he can’t stop telling Lucy how happy he is she lived. 

It takes some decades, but the time team finally retires: they’ve explored unknown civilizations, stumbled upon priceless artifacts, and met amazing people, and they have a few children and a wonderful pension plan to show for it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for showing up y'all.


End file.
